Shadow's Balance
by Ame no Neko
Summary: It started the two weeks after he arrived, after he had so suddenly and abruptly entered her life. Two weeks after Kenshin Himura started living with her, Kaoru Kamiya discovered he had nightmares.


**A/N: **I decided to try another vignette-type thing, this time in the dreaded realm of anime. I've taken a common theme/idea used in many RK fanfictions and attempted to put a spin on it. I hope I have done these two extraordinary characters justice, and that I have not strayed so far onto the main road that the underlying purpose of this piece is forgotten.

**Shadow's Balance**

It started the two weeks after he arrived, after he had so suddenly and abruptly entered her life. Two weeks after she asked him to stay, she heard it. Again and again, he screamed and thrashed and moaned, followed by a silence shadowed by the memories of his torture.

Two weeks after Kenshin Himura started living with her, during one sleepless night, Kaoru Kamiya discovered he had nightmares. But they were more than nightmares. They tortured and beat and broke him, haunting memories of death and blood and terror so deep and dark they followed him even in the day. Like a shadow. Like the restless Battousai unwillingly dormant, raging inside him.

And if she strained, and listened, after a few moments she could hear him walking, so groggy and terrified and despaired that he couldn't keep his footfalls light and soundless. Perhaps that silent stealth would've brought up more memories.

Each night she got up and left her room behind him, seeing his shadowed, slouched figure stagger down the hallway. Through the dojo, a brief walk across the polished wood, outside into the brusque, restless night air, down the steps, and finally to a bucket filled with water. He never noticed she was there as he knelt down before it.

Half-crazed, haunted, he thrust his hands into the liquid - did he know this was going to happen? did he know to put the water there for himself each night? - and scrubbed for long minutes until his hands were raw. She would watch for those minutes, always shocked and astounded, rooted with fear and deep grief for this man who lived but had died so many years before. She would cry and he wouldn't hear her, the voices of a thousand dead souls drowning out her soft sorrow.

Finally when she couldn't bear to leave him to his private grief any longer, she crossed the few feet that seemed like endless miles stretched between them. He, in his private world of grief and shadows. She, an intruder, a naive girl worlds away in her lonely, rose-colored paradise.

Her voice trembled as she called out to him, shaking and twisting around him, away from him, yet towards him, cutting through the voices of the lost and the voices who had lost so much. He would jump each time, every night after that first week she heard, and her hand would reach out and touch his shoulder. Guiltily he would take his raw, bleeding hands from the water and the shadows and before he could hide them in his sleeves she grabbed one wrist. Sadly, she gazed at the slight blood and the tensed muscles coiled in his hand.

She would gently coax him to stand without words. Pulling at his wrist slightly so he would walk beside her, not behind her with despaired and shamed steps, she led him inside. She sat him down and left to get bandages and fresh water, and when she returned he was always there, gazing at his trembling hands with a stare that lived in the past. Her deft hands reached out and carefully grasped his right hand first - always the right first, the sword hand, the hand that killed - and cleaned the blood off.

Each night, the eternal stain of blood and shadows on his hands disappeared. Each night, he smiled at her. Not a fake smile, not his smile that could please the world but could never make himself happy. It was real, and it was just for her.

She would tremble slightly but deftly bandage his hands with a carefulness only training in sword fighting could bring. When she would finish, he said no words but simply smiled at her with violet eyes that, for just a moment, would lose their dark, amber shadow. Clear amethyst gazed at her and she would be caught breathless, just for a second, before he bowed his head and broke the spell. He stood and walked back to his room, not looking back, not saying a word.

But always, always she could feel his smile radiating off him. It was a smile of peace.

The nightly routine became her anchor. She couldn't fall asleep without seeing that peace on his face, without knowing that someone, anyone - why her? - could bring him such calm after bloody years of chaos and suffering.

Yet each day the bandages were nowhere to be found, the small cuts on his hand healed to a faded pink. The same, ingenuous smile would greet everyone each morning at breakfast. His hands would be steady instead of trembling with horrors of the past as he served the meal, gracefully and deftly moving in his well-practiced way.

No one knew of what happened at night, no one but them. And sometimes Kaoru wondered if it was just some insane dream, some fantasy borne from half-consciousness that she could really bring comfort to the remarkable, tortured, dead man who half-lived in her home. The man who only seemed to live when he smiled without darkness.

Then he would look at her and the foggy shadow lifted for a brief second, the genuine smile twitching lightly at his mouth. And she knew it was real, at night, and his gaze that was warm and open said she was his peace.

An answering smile would burst out unbidden from herself.

Half of the world must stay in darkness, so the other may know sunlight. But in knowing that happy sunshine, it must also know that soon it will have to surrender to darkness in its weakness, so the other half can have its turn knowing the sun.

The careful balance was kept as each night she sacrificed herself to his darkness, sacrificed herself to the voices of those long past so he would know light. So he could feel the brief calm of standing under the sunrays and smiling in peace and warmth.

So the voices would momentarily stop their haunted sobbing and let a dead man live again. Even if it was just for a few, brief moments of clear amethyst.

To her, amethyst was far more beautiful than the sunlight. Sometimes, when his false mask was lost, he thought deep blue that shone with inner light was to be treasured more than the sky that depended on the sun.

And the shadows surrender to the light that they couldn't consume, because it was too bright to fight against.

**A/N:** Sort of an aimless vignette-ish thing...the main theme wasn't even really established until the end. Not very good, but it's been a long time since I've explored the odd relationship between Kenshin and Kaoru (and please forgive the unoriginality of this topic).

I think, really, that it's best to leave things unresolved, knowing that someday they will be together, but not now. For now, I think, they need to keep the balance until they overcome darkness together and don't need to balance precariously anymore. Or maybe I'm just feeling philosophical in my fevered state...

The only thing that's really bothering me (though, of course, this whole piece screams at me with its imperfections and the roughness of an amateur, 15-year-old author) is that second to last paragraph. It seemed kind of mushy and unnecessary, though I can't help but like the idea that despite this sunlight that's treasured, Kenshin and Kaoru ultimately find the brightest light in each other. So, I hope you forgive me for gushing with such an incomplete, brief thought. This was not intended to be a completely romantic piece, since that would be rather out of character from the subtly growing relationship between them.

Yes, this is a oneshot. Unless I write another vignette about them, in which case I'll probably make it a "Chapter 2" of sorts. However, that is VERY unlikely. I have an account (ranting akumas) over at fictionpress that requires my constant attention (as I'm writing a novel, after all). This was just a brief stroke of unoriginal inspiration. I hope I haven't wasted your time with this rather poor piece or with my comments (kudos to those that read it).


End file.
